Daryl's Angel: Saviour (Book Two)

Chapter 46: Last Day on Earth

It's like a stage for the world's worst play, and Daryl is just one of the players.

His shoulder hurts like hell, his blood sticky and cold against his skin, and the blanket covering his shoulders barely fights off the chill, his body trembling like a leaf. Dwight got the drop on him back in the woods, shot him before he could retaliate, and the pain just doesn't end. The van is dark, tiny pinpricks of light just barely squeezing through the bullet holes, and it still isn't enough to prepare him for when he's finally flung back into the light.

There are so many of them. So many Saviours, all whistling that haunting tune, so many headlights brightening the cold night. Daryl drops to his knees, forced to grovel in the dirt like an animal. He's exhausted. He's in pain. All day, his mind has run wild with sick fantasies of finally feeding Dwight a bullet, and this is where it brought him.

If he had listened to her and stayed back...Glenn, Michonne, and Rosita wouldn't be here kneeling beside him.

"M-Maggie?" Glenn asks.

"On your knees!"

Daryl's eyes dart down the line: Rick, Carl, Abraham, Sasha, Aaron, Eugene, and Maggie. It's worse, worse than he could have imagined, but he doesn't see Hope. Maggie looks like hell warmed over, hair sticking to her face, eyes gaunt, skin pale. What happened since he left? How the hell did they all end up here?

"Alright! We got a full boat!" says one of the Saviours, a man with a moustache and a bald patch. "Let's meet the man!"

He knocks on the RV door, and after a moment, a dark-haired man in a leather jacket steps out into the light. When you've heard a name said again and again, and seen the fear it brings out in those who say it, you come to expect someone larger than life. Daryl has never found any man to be worthy of fear on such a scale, and for sure not this asshole.

"Pissing our pants yet?" the man asks. He steps further into the light, walking with the swagger of a man with deadly confidence. He carries a bat wrapped in barbed wire on his shoulder, a red scarf around his neck. "Boy, do I have a feeling we're getting close."

He grins as he parades along the lineup, staring them all down. He walks like he doesn't have a care in the world.

"Yep," he hums. "It's gonna be pee-pee pants city here real soon. Which one of you pricks is the leader?"

"It's this one," one of his lackeys says, pointing to Rick. "He's the guy."

He stops in front of Rick with a smile.

"Hi. You're Rick, right? I'm Negan."

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Daryl has made a lot of dumbass decisions in his life. It comes with the territory of being a dumbass. The most recent crime in his feats of dumbassery has to be nearly running his pregnant wife over with a motorcycle this morning, but he's going to top that. He's doing everything he can to resist, but he's angry, and only getting angrier with every word that Negan spills from his shithole of a mouth.

"I'm gonna beat the holy hell outta one of you."

All the Saviours he's met have acted the same way, and seeing Negan, Daryl understands why. They're all cheap copies, all trying to put on the don't-give-a-fuck attitude that their leader exudes. Negan speaks like everything is as it must be, that his word is the new law of the land.

A life of servitude stretches out before them. Daryl hopes that Negan will pick him and let the others live. Hope is already mad at him. She can hear of his death and know that she was right about everything. She can feel better about it knowing that she did everything she could to stop his dumb ass from coming out here. She can have their baby, their little bundle of joy, and know that their dumbass father won't be around to fuck them up.